Saturday, February 23, 2013

Tales of Blight and Horror is a collection of three short stories, and one sneak preview, written by Ryan Notch. I picked it up for a short, quick read on the Kindle and finished it in one sitting.

A Heart Shaped Uterus was the main story of this set, and if you like your horror bizarre and a bit wacky, then this author is for you. Though the story was strange and interesting enough, the ending was a bit anti-climatic. Also includes a sneak peek into his full-length novel, Nowhere Blvd, which I added to my Kindle wish list.

The Woman in Black is a ghost story set in Victorian London. Arthur Kipps is a young lawyer who's sent to a remote village in the northeastern shores of England to settle the affairs of one of the firm's clients. As he arrives in town, he finds that the locals are pretty tight-lipped over the late Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. And rightly so! As it turns out, eerily strange things have been happening at the house, and soon Arthur himself finds he's being haunted by a strange woman in black, a woman with a pale, gaunt face and a dark air of malevolence all about her.

I have the DVD movie of The Woman in Black waiting in my Netflix queue so I wanted to read the book first, as I often do. The book itself was fairly short, only about 176 pages, and though originally written in 1983, the writing style definitely harks back to that of the more formal Victorian era in which it takes place. In that regard, it's quite different from the standard horror novel of today. Instead of creeping you out with blood and gore, the author uses amazingly vivid descriptions that evoke all sorts of chilling and spine-tingling visions. I can imagine that it would come through to the silver screen quite well and I'm now looking forward to seeing the movie.

The only real reason I didn't rate it higher is because I'm not a huge fan of the more formal writing style of Victorian times. Plus, I sometimes had to look up unfamiliar words--a simple task really since I was reading on my Kindle--but it would break the flow and I'd end up having to reread a particular passage over once I fully understood the word's meaning. Though the exact time frame the story takes place was never mentioned outright, the author writes so well that she doesn't have to; her writing takes you right there!